LATIKA M BOURKE: Iranian regime could soon start to splinter with money predicted to run out in three weeks

Donald Trump’s former Veterans Secretary has predicted that the Iranian regime could soon start to splinter because it will run out of money in three weeks time.

The US President has become increasingly impatient with the ceasefire and is mulling whether to restart military action against Iran as a way of trying to force the regime to agree to a peace deal.

But after a request from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, Mr Trump said in a Truth Social post that he had called off a planned military attack for Tuesday.

He said that “serious negotiations” were now taking place and expressed confidence that a deal that would lead to Iran relinquishing its ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

“We were getting ready to do a very major attack tomorrow and put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever, but possibly for a little while, because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran, and we’ll see what they amount to,” Mr Trump said at the White House.

The US has wiped out Iran’s military except for its mobile fast attack boats, which can carry missiles. The Iranians have been using these to close the Strait of Hormuz through which around 20 per cent of the world’s oil supplies passes. .

The US has responded by imposing a blockade on ships leaving the Strait but after weeks has been unable to reach a military breakthrough in reopening the Strait or on the diplomatic front by forcing Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.

US CENTCOM said it had redirected 85 commercial vessels as part of the blockade.

Speaking at the Lennart Meri conference in Tallinn, Estonia, Robert Wilkie, who served as Veterans Secretary in the first Trump Administration and is now chair of American security at the Trump-aligned think tank America First Policy Institute, said the US was succeeding in Iran.

“There are some people who are cheering against that success. According to London, they have three weeks left of funds in their Treasury. The blockade is working,” he said.

“The conventional capabilities of the Iranians is gone. What we do with the blockade is by eliminating to pay their security forces, then you begin to see the separation of the true believers from the fellow travellers.

“The fellow travellers are going to go back to care of their families and what I’m looking for is the same thing we saw in 1979 when the security forces stopped firing people.

“That was the end of the Shah but this is not a short-term thing.”

Mr Wilkie did not account for Iran taking out debt financing from a country such as China to make up for any budgetary shortfall while the war continues.

He said that Hezbollah in Lebanon was “almost gone” and that Hamas in Gaza was “gone.”

“I’m sorry that we went through a strategic pause. I think the pressure should have been kept up,” he said.

But he said that the American people had not and should have been told what the United States strategic goals were in going to war with Iran.

“We have a high threshold of pain, I’m a child of Vietnam, the American people didn’t turn on Vietnam until Richard Nixon came in and said I’m going to end it.”

He said eliminating the regime “hurts Russia and it hurts China.”

“Because remember for us, and for the rest of Western civilisation, Iran is China’s foothold in the Middle East, the day before the last round of attacks, five Chinese ships were in Iranian ports offloading so-called dual-use technologies, and they weren’t going to be used for transistor radios for the Mullahs,” he said.

“Dual-use technology for ballistic missiles, which Iran was building as rapidly as they could after the June attacks by Israel and the United States.

“We’ve been at war with Iran since I was a little boy. They’ve killed thousands of our people. They have no intention of stopping.

“The current foreign minister says Israel is a one bomb solution.”

His comments were met with scepticism in the room, including by the CNN Global Affairs Analyst who was moderating the discussion who told Mr Wilkie that his predictions remained “TBD.”

Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ayman Safadi said Iran’s interventionist policies and support for regional proxies needed to be addressed.

He added that reclaiming control over the Strait of Hormuz and Tehran’s nuclear quest had to be sorted to avoid another war in ten years.

“Piecemeal scenarios will not work,” he said.

Many analysts believe that the US and Israel’s assault on Iran has constituted no more than “mowing the grass” — degrading but not destroying their military capabilities as well as failing to lead to any regime change.

Mona Senior Advisor and Director of the Middle East Program at the Washington think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said the tactic could lead to a more dangerous Iran.

“Pursuing a policy of episodic attacks on Iran will reaffirm Tehran’s ambitions for lasting deterrence—likely via pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Following multiple attacks on Iran starting in 2024, Iran’s leadership already may have concluded that possessing even a crude nuclear device could be its hope for deterrence” she said.

“‘Mowing the grass’ in Iran will only further incentivise these ambitions.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghae said in a press conference that the US had no right to negotiate on Iran’s nuclear program.

“The issue of rights is not something about which we are willing to negotiate or compromise,” he said, in comments reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

“Iran’s right to enrichment is recognised on the basis of the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]. There is no need for anyone or any other party to recognise it for Iran; this right already exists.”

The Institute for the Study of War said that the United States and Iran continue to pursue “fundamentally incompatible negotiating positions.